Did Scott's own South Pole team seal his fate?

The death of Robert Falcon Scott as he returned from the South Pole may partly have been the result of the actions of his own colleagues which were later hushed up, a new book claims.

In it, Chris Turney of the University of New South Wales in Sydney says he has uncovered archive material suggesting that Scott and his men found less food than expected at a key point on their return journey from the South Pole in February 1912.

Turney points the finger at Teddy Evans, Scott’s second-in-command, who turned back before reaching the pole.

En route to the Pole, Scott’s party laid down depots of food and fuel to sustain them on the way back. It is well known that Scott’s team found food and fuel supplies unexpectedly low at some of these depots. Turney now claims to have new evidence of a further food shortage at a critical part of the journey, when the team were on the home stretch and starving.

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Scott and three other men died just 18 kilometres from their final food depot. Had they reached it, they probably would have survived.

Diary accounts

The claim is largely based on notes from two meetings in April 1913 between George Curzon, president of the UK’s Royal Geographical Society, and the widows of Scott and Edward Wilson, who died alongside the British leader.

In the first meeting, Kathleen Scott pointed out entries in her husband’s diary complaining about food shortages and the “lack of thoughtfulness” of other members of the expedition.

In a separate meeting, Oriana Wilson told Curzon that her husband’s diary contained a passage complaining of an “inexplicable” shortage of food on the return journey. Curzon also notes that she was determined to keep it a secret.

Turney says the other food shortfall that we previously knew about was at depots Scott’s party reached after Wilson gave up writing his diary.

He believes Wilson was referring to a depot that Scott and the surviving men reached on 24 February 1912. In Wilson’s published diary, the entry for that date makes no mention of any shortage, but Turney says the pencilled text of the original has numerous random gaps amid dense text, suggesting that somebody – probably Oriana – rubbed out part of that entry, Turney says.

Likely culprit

The most likely culprit for the shortage is Teddy Evans, Scott’s second-in-command, who travelled south with Scott but was omitted from the final push to the pole with about 200 kilometres to go. He and two other men reluctantly turned back at that point.

Evans went down with scurvy on the return journey and had to be pulled on a sledge by his two companions, perhaps accounting for them taking more than their fair share of food.

It also appears that Curzon decided to hush up the controversy. “Curzon could not risk the story getting out,” Turney says. “Scott and his companions had been declared heroes. To suggest that one of the returning teams had helped themselves to more than their fair share of food, contributing to the men’s deaths, would have changed everything.”

Curiously, Scott’s own diary entry for 24 February does not mention a food shortage&colon; “Found store in order except shortage oil,” it reads.

But Turney claims that Scott was distracted by the severe and totally unexpected shortage of fuel at the depot – the cans had not been sealed properly and the paraffin had evaporated – and the recent death of another of his party, Edgar Evans. He corrected his omission three days later with an entry saying that they had less food than originally thought.

Roland Huntford, author of a dual biography of Scott and his Norwegian rival Roald Amundsen, says that the story is consistent with the shambolic nature of the expedition, but does not think Evans can be blamed. The food depots were badly organised and it would have been all but impossible for Evans and his men to know how much food was rightfully theirs. “It was entirely Scott’s fault because of poor organisation,” he says.